Cattaleya had no idea that Lin Mu’s own backing stretched into realms and powers that dwarfed what she hinted at. Still, he did not dismiss her words outright.
Instead, he leaned forward slightly, voice calm. "How much blood are we talking about?"
Cattaleya’s lips curled into a sharper smile. "Normal blood won’t do. What I need is your blood essence. Only then can it rge with my clan’s inheritance. But with your body and vitality?" She gestured toward him, her gaze sweeping over his towering physique. "Parting with a little essence won’t harm you at all. It will recover before long."
Lin Mu’s expression remained unreadable, but inside, he weighed the proposition carefully.
It wasn’t that he feared the loss of blood essence; his body could endure it.
What tempted him was the potential gain. Having soone like Cattaleya bound by bargain to aid him would be no small advantage. Her experience, her connections to the Celestial Realm, and her clan’s history of exploration... all of it could serve him well, especially in his search for the missing parts of the ring.
For a mont, the balance tilted in her favor. Lin Mu almost opened his mouth to agree.
But then—
"Absolutely not."
The words ca like ice, sharp enough to still the night air.
Lin Mu’s head snapped toward the source.
From the shadowed treeline of the garden, a figure stepped forward. Her presence was cold, domineering, and utterly uncompromising. Though her voice had been calm, its refusal carried the weight of an unyielding decree.
Cattaleya stiffened, her eyes narrowing as she turned toward the intruder.
Lin Mu’s pulse quickened, though not out of fear. Whoever this was, their sudden interruption was no coincidence.
The garden, monts ago filled with only Cattaleya’s laughter and the quiet lapping of lake water, now seed to hold its breath.
Under the moonlit veil of the banquet gardens, the figure stepped forward slowly, her presence unraveling the silence like the steady ripples of a stone cast into still water.
The veil of shadow lifted with each step, revealing the delicate sweep of white robes, pristine and unblemished despite the damp grass. A long cloak hung low, covering the woman’s head, but the faint gleam of her erald eyes glowed beneath its edge, sharp and unwavering.
Lin Mu’s breath, which had tensed when the cold voice had cut through the night, steadied the instant recognition struck him. Relief swelled in his chest, and he allowed his taut shoulders to relax.
"Saintess..." he said softly, his tone touched with both surprise and ease.
The woman... no, the Saintess gave only the faintest hum in acknowledgnt, her gaze not straying from Cattaleya even once.
Her silence was not indifference but authority, a command that made even the whisper of the night breeze hesitate to pass through the branches overhead.
Lin Mu felt calm. In her presence, he always did.
The Saintess was a figure who, despite her mysteries and chilling strength, had never given him cause for unease. There was a strange reassurance in the steadiness of her existence, a sense of certainty he could rely upon.
But while Lin Mu was calm, Cattaleya was the very opposite.
The instant the woman’s figure had co into full view, the blood in her veins roared like fire alarms.
Her instincts scread louder than any battlefield she had fought on before.
The smile that once played on her lips was gone, her body drawn taut as a bowstring. Muscles shifted under her skin as she entered a stance of readiness, and with a sudden flare of faint spatial ripples, her black greatsword manifested in her hands, its obsidian edge catching the pale moonlight like a void made blade.
Her every nerve burned with alarm.
This wasn’t just another strong opponent...
This wasn’t even rely a dangerous one. The aura exuding from the veiled Saintess was suffocating, crushing in a way that her very soul recognized. It was the aura of sothing higher, sothing beyond the scope of the Immortal Realm.
Her lips tightened into a thin line, her eyes narrowing. ’This pressure... it’s impossible...’
Cattaleya’s thoughts spun, her clan-born instincts whispering what her pride hesitated to admit.
’A Celestial... she’s a Celestial. But how? How is soone like her standing here, in the Immortal Realm?’
The aura she felt was not inferior to her clan’s elders. In fact, the longer she stood under its weight, the more her certainty shifted.
’No... not equal. Stronger. Far stronger.’
Her knuckles whitened as her grip on her greatsword tightened. Every fiber of her body scread at her to run, to kneel, or to bow her head, but her pride forced herself to remain standing.
And then, Lin Mu spoke again, his voice familiar and casual in a way that jarred her spinning thoughts.
"Saintess... you’re here?"
That single word of address froze Cattaleya more thoroughly than even the suffocating aura.
’He knows her?’
The Saintess did not speak to him for now, however. Her erald eyes, glinting like sharpened gemstones beneath the veil, fixed wholly on Cattaleya. The pressure of her gaze alone felt like the fangs of a serpent poised at her throat.
Cattaleya shifted her stance, her greatsword lifting an inch higher on instinct, only for the Saintess to finally move.
It was the smallest of gestures. A single, pale finger adorned with a sharp green painted nail rose and pointed toward her.
"Don’t even try, child," the Saintess said, her voice calm, quiet, but layered with an authority that reverberated against the very air. "You are far too early. Even your clan’s elders would think twice before daring to breathe in my presence."
The words struck like thunder, carrying not boast but fact.
Cattaleya’s heart pounded like thunder during a tribulation.
Her muscles, which had coiled like steel, betrayed her and seized. Her limbs froze, her body stiffening as if bound by invisible chains. The sword in her hands suddenly felt unbearably heavy, as though the world itself had decided to crush her defiance.
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